Fergie Sutherland Finds a Champion and Becomes a Hero

CHELTENHAM, England— Fergie Sutherland moved through the crowd on his one good leg with a look of stubborn relief. He had never liked the fuss, but then, he had never tried to win the most respected race in his profession, either.

Imperial Call won the Cheltenham Gold Cup and £200,000 ($305,000) Thursday for an owner Sutherland declined to identify. It is the key race in the national hunt festival, a midweek party brought to life each year by the 5,000 Irish who take the ferry over.

Sutherland, a 64-year-old Scot, trains his horses in Ireland, in the natural seclusion of his mother's old home. He moved there 27 years ago, and on Thursday, as if a curtain had been lifted from him, he became an adopted national treasure not unlike Jack Charlton, Ireland's former soccer manager. The 7-year-old was Ireland's first Gold Cup winner since 1986.

"I knew he had it in him when he was a 5-year-old," said the trainer, wearing a gray raincoat and a soft hat; a TV camera at his shoulder and dozens of the friends he never knew he had jostling behind him. Posed archly before them, Sutherland seemed very much the statue. "He had it quite easy in the end. He never made a mistake, jumped like a buck, and certainly enjoyed his afternoon, I think."

The 10-horse race had been, as expected, between the English-trained favorite One Man and Imperial Call. One Man, a rare gray, had been raised to become the next star of jump racing. He had won 10 of his last 11 races and was alongside Imperial Call and rider Conor O'Dwyre approaching the last two of the 22 fences on this famously undulating course of 3 1/4 miles.

Who knows what Sutherland was thinking; surely most of the 55,000 here were anticipating that One Man would surge ahead. He was supposed to be racing against the likes of Arkle and Desert Orchid, the all-time greats. He was supposed to become the first Gold Cup champion among the nearly 2,000 winners trained by the 66-year-old Englishman Gordon Richards. Then up came an Irish roar, louder than a minority opinion.

"He just got very, very tired," said One Man's jockey, Richard Dunwoody, who is probably the world's best. "If he hadn't been third at the time I probably would have pulled him up."

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One Man finished sixth, becoming the 16th consecutive favorite to lose at the Cheltenham festival. In the Gold Cup, no big favorite has succeeded since Arkle in 1966.

Imperial Call won at 9-2, withstanding a late challenge by Rough Quest.

"He put them in their place today and he's improving every day," said Sutherland, having seen Imperial Call become a potential star in winning the Hennessy Gold Cup last month. "I haven't been to Cheltenham for 30 years, and this is the only way to come back."

Sutherland, who was educated at Eton College, lost his leg in a booby trap while in the army in 1952. He had switched regiments to the 5th Dragoon Guards to fight in the Korean War. His friends say the disability hardly bothered him. Until five years ago, he would arrive for weekends with three spare legs: one for riding, one for shooting and the other for dancing.

For years he had sold off any horse that might have become Imperial Call. This one, trained like all the others in the fine quiet hills of the River Lee near County Cork, has satisfied an itch he never knew he had, or refused to recognize. Even then, he had refused to join the crowds here until Thursday, preferring to watch the first two days on TV in his hotel room.

"I don't want to go spivving about, bumping into people every five yards," he said: A good-natured grump, and a hero across the Irish Sea.